Your Stories

Feminism in the 60s

STORY BY: Noni MacDonald YEAR: 1966 LOCATION: Kingston, ON

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Noni shares 3 stories about how feminism evolved in the late 1960s. When she started at Queen's University in 1966, women were only allowed 2 late leaves a week. You actually needed a letter from your parents to the Dean of Women to go to the University formals. By the time she graduated in 1970, that had all disappeared. She then remembers having discussion with other women in residence about whether women should be paid the same as men for doing the same job. For example, Noni's mother became the first woman elementary school principal in Montreal, and she was paid equitably. The women in residence questioned whether a married woman needed that kind of money. Noni's 3rd story is about her sister, who went to University in 1968. She was one of 5 women in an engineering class of 100+ men. They needed to live together to support each other in what Noni calls "a very different kind of time". Thanks for sharing, Noni.